While they probably pale in comparison to their predecessor as well as some of the more iconic albums that were released around the same time, I consider Guns n’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion albums–released 35 years ago today–formative. Especially Use Your Illusion II, which was the first full album I dubbed from a friend’s tape using my parents’ stereo. It was probably the first hard rock/metal album I owned, and definitely the first one I had with a “Parental Advisory” sticker on the cover (even though I didn’t own the actual tape). Prior to that, my miniscule cassette collection was pretty safe: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and random movie soundtracks like Top Gun, Footloose, and Over the Top. Nobody was confiscating those the way parents were searching through my classmates’ bedrooms for Girls Girls Girls or Appetite for Destruction.

I had very little knowledge of anything music at the time–to be fair, I’ve always been behind the curve–and I hadn’t heard anything from the band beyond “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, and “Paradise City.” But because they were controversial and more “adult” with their content, I think some part of me reveled in owning something my mom would have questioned and the sneaky way I went about procuring it. As if it was an issue of Playboy or something.

Anyway, I listened to my copy of Use Your Illusion II on a loop for weeks, probably annoying the hell out of anyone in the house when I played it in my room and damaging my ears when I threw it in my Walkman. I’d soon dub my friend’s copy of the other Illusion album and wear that one out as well, but eventually would settle on listening to a handful of songs from both. “November Rain,” which I talked about in the third episode of my podcast all the way back in 2013 (check) was one of them. Another was the corresponding epic piano-heavy ballad from Use Your Illusion II: “Estranged.”

The second-longest song in Guns N’ Roses’ catalog (the 15-minute “Coma” is the longest), “Estranged” runs for nine and a half minutes and is a piano-forward power ballad (perhaps an epic ballad) that is about lost love and loneliness. I was obviously drawn to it because of the piano (“Breakdown,” another track on Use Your Illusion II drew me in the same way) and remember being blown away by both how long it was and how complicated it seemed. It was a “two-sided” song on my copy–I was a complete amateur when it came to dubbing things and had to split the song between the end of side A and the beginning of side B of the tape–and like “Coma,” just … kept … going. By the time I’d finally get the album on CD (part of my Columbia House 13), “Estranged” was in my top 5 favorite songs by the band.

The song begins plaintively with Axl trying out a soft voice. I take this as an introduction or some sort of topic/thesis statement, especially since the first full movement of “Estranged” is led by Slash’s guitar. I don’t think he’s exiting a church to play a solo in the desert this time around, but he’s just as strong–if not stronger in places–than in “November Rain.” That song has some beautifully sad guitar solos, some of which are twinged with maybe a little hope. These are just downright painful (and according to Slash, some of the most difficult on the two albums).

Axl’s vocal gets this serious sound at times when he’s not going back to Soft Axl, and he reserves his famously high voice for much later in the song. And the way the lyrics and music blend is that the music–especially the guitar solos–take the emotion from the lyrics and extend it. When Soft Axl sings about himself, he sticks with the piano. In the verses where he’s clearly singing to his ex, he’s Serious Axl, and also pleading but in a way that’s more angry than lovelorn.

In fact, we don’t get the lovelorn until the song completely switches key after a long piano interlude and guitar solo and goes into its second movement. Here’s where the classic Axl voice comes out. He knows the relationship is over and knows he has to move on despite how much pain he’s in and how many regrets he has.

And then … there’s the video.

Directed by Andrew Monahan, the video for “Estranged” is the last one released for the Illusion albums, as the single and video dropped in 1994. And the video is the third in a trilogy that begins with “Don’t Cry” and continued with “November Rain” (the most successful of the three).

We open with the definition of “illusion” on the screen and then all this empty playground equipment? Yeah, I’m not sure what it has to do with anything either, but I haven’t watched this entire video in … come to think of it, I don’t think I have. I do remember something with dolphins.

Anyway, a SWAT team is raiding Axl’s house and he’s hiding. Then we cut to concert footage, which was filmed at one of their concerts from the Use Your Illusion tour. I guess if you’re going to pretend that you’re still the biggest band in the world, this is how you do it. Oh, and you have a bunch of models watching you perform via CCTV.

So at one point, backstage, Axl lies down on a couch wearing high-top sneakers, a Charles Manson T-shirt and a bandana that makes him look like Bret Michaels, and his soul leaves his body or something. He gets into a hot shower with his clothes on and we cut back to concert footage.

Then we’re back at the house and while a girl plays in the yard, a bunch of guys dressed in white look like they’re removing things and we see the definition of ‘estranged” on the screen. Well, the guys in white are leading Axl–dressed in white–to a limo. The limo drives with a motorcycle escort somewhere, but then we’re at an airport where a plane is opening up. The band and their equipment are walking toward it and inside the plane is a … CGI dolphin?

I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not, but the story goes that after having Stephanie Seymour in the first two videos of this trilogy (but not this video since she and Axl had broken up at that point), he said he’d rather have dolphins in the video than models. So … dolphins. Yeah.

Anyway, we are now seeing the band and their families sitting around the TV watching the dolphins. Axl stands outside one of those stores that has a lot of TVs in the window and smokes pensively. Then he starts walking down the Sunset Strip and the dolphins are swimming in the street alongside him.

This part, I remember.

He keeps walking. And walking. He passes a bar and Slash appears to play a guitar solo. Being able to summon Slash at any given moment would be a pretty cool power to have when you think about it. And then Slash just starts moving down the sidewalk like it’s a moving walkway, playing guitar the entire time.

And now we’re on an oil tanker. Axl’s in his Manson shirt and bandana like earlier but has added a flannel because it’s 1994 and walks around the deck. He climbs up on the rail and jumps. He rejects a life preserver. A guy in a rowboat can’t reach him. He goes under and drowns. But then … dolphins!

And Slash emerges from the water playing his guitar. Now I’m wondering what I would do if I had the power to summon Slash. It would liven up faculty meetings; I know that.

We head toward the last minute of the video where a Coast Guard chuppah flies over the ocean as we see more concert footage. They rescue Axl and we close with his high-top falling in the water while the definition of “disillusion” appears on the screen.

The last shot is Axl in a white bathrobe sitting on a red couch next to a CGI dolphin wearing a flannel. He signs off with “Lose Your Illusions, Love, Axl, Gn’R ’93.”

It’s all pretentious and the video is definitely ridiculous, but I give that a pass because when it comes to the “epic” songs on the Illusion albums, Axl and the band don’t do anything half-assed. It’s big and bombastic in a Queen sort of way (and how much did Axl Rose want to be Freddie Mercury at one time or another during the Illusion years?), and when you think of it, really is the last gasp of the Monster Ballad. About a week later, Nevermind would drop and as 1991 rolled into 1992, Seattle had left the ’80s bands in the dust. Van Halen survived for a while because they’d softened and gone so mainstream since Sammy Hagar came on; Guns N’ Roses was still one of the biggest bands in the world and touring with Metallica (a tour that was fairly infamous for injuries and Axl’s antics), so they weren’t as vulnerable to the “Grunge” revolution as, say, Cinderella and Warrant. Still, the band imploded, releasing the covers album The Spaghetti Incident? and then going dark.

“Estranged” is emotionally deep in a way that a 14-year-old boy who had never had a girlfriend would find profound. I was 14 in the fall of 1991. And yes, I found it profound. But this isn’t about my immaturity or my sad social life in the ninth grade. It’s about how at that time, I said, I had very little knowledge of music beyond whatever songs WBLI was playing on my parents’ car radio (which were, around this time, Paula Abdul, Color Me Badd, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, and Michael Bolton). But getting Use Your Illusion II led me to paying more attention to things other than middling pop and treacly ballads. The piano, the guitar solos, the bombast, and the illusion of Guns N’ Roses led me into that room and I never looked back.